David Wittenburg, a director for Westat’s Social Policy and Economics Research practice, has spent his career on research initiatives to improve the lives of people with disabilities. He has led several demonstration and research projects focused on improving employment outcomes for youth and adults over the past 20 years. This work includes large evaluation and policy research for several federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration, Health and Human Services, Department of Labor and Department of Education. He has used a combination of evaluation methods drawing from survey, administrative, and qualitative data.

He has presented findings on disability-related issues in testimonies before Congress, as a panel member for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in journal articles, book chapters, and podcasts, and as an editor.. He also brings practical knowledge about serving children who have been removed from their homes as a former co-president of the Board for Court Appointed Special Advocates in Mercer-Burlington County. He was recognized by the state of New Jersey for his work with CASA and was awarded the 2024 Change Maker Award.

He is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and was formerly a senior fellow at Mathematica, a senior associate at the Urban Institute and a researcher the Lewin Group. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Syracuse University.

Purvi Sevak, is a business director at Mathematica overseeing Mathematica’s portfolio of disability research. She has management responsibilities in overseeing studies using a range of methodological approaches, data, and dissemination. Dr. Sevak has been studying employment for people with disabilities and other vulnerable populations for over 20 years. She has worked with federal, state, and private clients including the National Institute for Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, Rehabilitation Services Administration, State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies, the Social Security Administration, and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Dr. Sevak currently leads Mathematica’s work on the Minority Youth and Centers for Independent Living project, which includes research and technical assistance activities to increase and improve services for transition aged youth with disabilities from minority backgrounds. She also serves as an engagement lead on the Equity Technical Assistance Center, where she provides training for Health and Human Services staff on advancing equity through quantitative research.

She brings her own lived experience as a person with Type 1 Diabetes, who depends on daily and timely insulin dosing and benefits from ongoing technology innovations. She was formerly a professor at Hunter College, CUNY. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan.

Diana has served as Business Manager for the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University since 2008 and as Director of Operations since 2011. In this role, Diana manages BBI’s annual budget of approximately $6 million, including external grants and contracts, federally funded projects, and gifts and endowments. In addition to overseeing the day-to-day operations, she manages resources for current and future goals of BBI through the development single and multi-year projections, and monitoring budget status and financial reports.

In 2013, Diana began serving as Principal Investigator (PI) of the Appellate Brief Legal Training project, a 5-year, $2.8 million dollar project at BBI. She was also the Principal Investigator (PI), on three sponsored research projects from the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (NYS DHSES) examining County Emergency Communications Governance and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) as they relate to crisis response and engagement with traditional and non-traditional stakeholders through the Burton Blatt Institute of the College of Law.

Diana has established strong working relationships with colleagues across University Academic Departments, as well as with the Office of Sponsored Programs, and the Office of Sponsored Accounting. She interprets and applies the University’s policies and procedures to operations and ensures compliance. When Diana joined SU’s Office of Sponsored Accounting in 2006 as Senior Accountant, she was responsible for sponsored funding from federal, state, and other sources in regards to all financial matters including reporting, billing, and expenditure approval.

A 1991 graduate of SU’s Whitman School of Management, Diana served as an accountant with Coopers & Lybrand LLP (PwC), Dermody Burke & Brown CPAs LLC as well as for private and public sectors before coming back to Syracuse University.  In public accounting, she worked with clients in construction, school districts, and non-profit agencies.

In 1996, Diana took the position of Controller for J&B Installations, Inc., a large commercial roofing company with offices in Skaneateles, Rochester, and Buffalo.  During her tenure at J&B, Diana not only managed financial matters, but also ensured the AIA documents, NYS DOL Prevailing Wage reports, and Certificates of Insurance forms were completed and maintained for all construction projects.

Diana’s experience in accounting for construction projects combined with her experience in school district accounting systems were capitalized on when she was appointed Treasurer of the Jordan Elbridge Central School District in 2003.  As Treasurer, Diana was responsible for financial management of over $20 million in the General Fund, as well as accounting for the school district’s Capital, Federal, School Lunch and Debt Service Funds. While at JE, Diana also wrote and was awarded a 5-year, $200,000 Records Management Grant from NYS Archives, an office of the NYS Education Department.

As a resident of Elbridge for over 20 years, Diana has been an active volunteer in her community through the PTA, PTO, as a Classroom Mom in two schools, and assistant Little League Coach.  She also took on what she considers to be one of the greatest privileges and responsibility to her community when elected to the JECSD Board of Education.  She served as Vice-President of the Board and as a member of the Audit, Budget, and Policy committees.

On leave serving as the SU Interim ADA/503/504 Coordinator

William has worked in the fields of education and law over 25 years, collaborating with and providing services for diverse individuals with disability and cultural/linguistic differences through extensive research, teaching, and advocacy. He has a lifetime of personal experience with disability.

Presently he has stepped out of his role at the Burton Blatt Institute to serve the University part-time in the  capacity of the Interim ADA/503/504 Coordinator in the Office of Equal Opportunity, Inclusion, and Resolution Services. In this role, William coordinates University compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal and state laws and regulations pertaining to persons with disabilities. Additionally, he has joined SU Chancellor Syverud’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion, and the Disability Cultural Center’s Advisory Board.

As Director of Legal Research and Writing at BBI, William has overseen the Institute’s disability law and policy research initiatives, and supervised law student research and writing across numerous BBI projects. In collaboration with Onondaga Community College through a grant partnership with BBI – the Onondaga Pathways to Careers (OPC) project funded by the Office of Disability Employment Policy, U.S. Department of Labor – William provides training and technical assistance to OCC faculty and staff for implementing inclusive pedagogical practices and programmatic services.

William is an Adjunct Law Professor at Syracuse University, and a Faculty Associate with the Center for Digital Literacy (SU School of Information Studies). He is the Executive Editor of the Disability Law & Policy e-Newsletter and was Managing Editor for the Iowa Law Review (2003-04). He is a member of the Disability Rights Bar Association, an organization of dedicated disability civil rights attorneys and scholars, and previously served on their Board of Directors (2011-17). He also served on the Board of Directors and in several officer positions for Onondaga Community Living (2005-11, 2016-17), an agency providing highly individualized services and supports for independent living and employment for individuals with intellectual or developmental disability.

William’s research interests include legal and policy developments affecting children with disabilities and their transition to the post-secondary world; assistive technology and accessible electronic & information technology; inclusive library programs and services; inclusive higher education and employer practices, disability civil rights across the lifespan, reasonable accommodations, and implementation of universal design (for learning) principles. He has published extensively on these issues.

Formerly, William served as a public educator (1989-2001), facilitating, implementing and assessing individualized education programs for children with diverse needs, and as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Papua New Guinea.

Publications

2015

• Peter Blanck, William Myhill, Arthur O’Reilly, Stefan Tromel, Jurgen Menze, Barbara Murray. (2015). Decent work for persons with disabilities: promoting rights in the global development agenda. International Labour Organization,
• William Myhill. (2015). Papua New Guinea. Graham A. Colditz, Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society, pp. 895-897, 2nd Ed.

2014

• Peter Blanck, Michael Waterstone, William N. Myhill & Charles D. Siegel . (2014). Disability Civil Rights Law and Policy: Cases and Materials. (3d Ed., 2014).

2013

• Peter Blanck, Bruce Goldstein, William N. Myhill. (2013). Legal Rights of Persons with Disabilities: An Analysis of Federal Law 2d Ed.. Horsham, PA: LRP Publications, Vol. 1.
• William N. Myhill & Kate Battoe. (2013). Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). Carlos E. Cortes, ed., Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia. pp. 398-403.
• Kelly J. Bunch & William N. Myhill. (2013). Disability and Ethnic Diversity . Carlos E. Cortes, ed., Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia. pp. 709-714.

2012

• Steven Mendelsohn, William N. Myhill, Michael Morris. (2012). Tax Subsidization of Personal Assistance Services. Disability & Health Journal, 5(2), 75-86.
• William N. Myhill, Renee Franklin Hill, Kristen Link, Ruth V. Small, Kelly J. Bunch. (2012). Developing the Capacity of Teacher-Librarians to Meet the Diverse Needs of All School Children: Project ENABLE. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 13(4).

2010

• William N. Myhill. (2010). Law & Policy Challenges for Achieving an Accessible eSociety: Lessons from the United States. L. Waddington & G. Quinn, eds., European Yearbook on Disability Law, 2, Oxford, UK: Intersentia, 103-129.

2009

• William N. Myhill. (2009). The First One Hundred Years of Special Education in America? 1817 to 1925Knol (Aug. 2008), reprinted in eJournal of Disability Law and Policy (Nov. 2011),
• William N. Myhill. (2009). Voice Recognition Software. Susan Burch, ed., in Encyclopedia of American Disability History 937,
• Peter Blanck, William N. Myhill, Janikke Solstad Vedeler, Joanna Morales, Paula Pearlman. (2009). Individuals with Cancer in the Workforce and Their Federal Rights. M. Feuerstein, ed., Work and Cancer Survivors, Springer Publishing, 255-276.
• Paul M.A. Baker, Jarice Hanson, William N. Myhill. (2009). The Promise of Municipal WiFi and Failed Policies of Inclusion: The Disability Divide. Information Policy, 14(1-2), 47-59.
• Naomi Schreuer, William N. Myhill, Deepti Samant, Tal Aratan-Bergman, Peter Blanck. (2009). Workplace Accommodations: Occupational Therapists as Mediator in the Interactive Process. Work, 34(2), 149-160.Workplace Accommodations: Occupational Therapists as Mediator in the Interactive Process (.pdf)
• William N. Myhill, Peter Blanck. (2009). Disability and Aging: Historical and Contemporary Challenges. The Marquette Elder’s Advisor Law Review, 11, 47-80.

2008

• William N. Myhill, Derrick L. Cogburn, Deepti Samant, Benjamin Addom, Peter Blanck. (2008). Developing Accessible Cyberinfrastructure-enabled Knowledge Communities in the Disability Community. Assistive Technology Journal, 20(3), 157-174.
• Kevin Cullen, Lutz Kubitschke, David McDaid, Peter Blanck, William N. Myhill, Gerard Quinn, Patrick O’Donoghue, Rune Halverson. (November 2008). Accessibility to ICT products and services by disabled and elderly people. European Commission, 1-129.

2007

• William N. Myhill, Deepti Samant, David Klein, Shelley Kaplan, Maria Veronica Reina, Peter Blanck. (2007). Distance Education Initiatives and Their 21st Century Role in the Lives of People with Disabilities. E.P. Bailey, ed., Focus on Distance Education Developments, London, UK: Nova Science Publishers, 1-38.
• Peter Blanck, Meera Adya, William N. Myhill, Deepti Samant, & Pei-Chun Chen. (2007). Employment of People with Disabilities: Twenty-five Years Back and Ahead. Law & Inequality: A Journal of Theory & Practice , 25(2) 323–53.

2006

• Peter Blanck, William N. Myhill, Phoebe Ball, Michael Morris & Steve Mendelsohn. (2006). Asset Accumulation & Economic Security. in Employer Perspectives on Workers with Disabilities: A National Summit to Develop a Research Agenda (September 19, 2006), at 93–102 (Interagency Committee on Disability Research, Sept. 2007).

2004

• William N. Myhill. (2004). No FAPE for Children with Disabilities in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Time to Redefine a Free Appropriate Public Education. Iowa Law Review, 89(3), 1051-1092.
• William N. Myhill. (2004). The State of Public Education and the Needs of English Language Learners in the Era of ‘No Child Left Behind’. Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, 8(2), 393-447.

2003

• David Klein, William N. Myhill, Linda Hansen, Gary Asby, Susan Michaelson, Peter Blanck. (2003). Electronic Doors to Education: Study of High School Web Accessibility in Iowa. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 21(1), 27-49.

Meera Adya, Ph.D., J.D., is the BBI Senior Director of Research and Evaluation and Affiliated Faculty in Psychology at Syracuse University and the Consortium for Culture and Medicine involving SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse University, and Le Moyne College. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on identifying and remediating social problems through empirical exploration of the factors that affect decision-making and testing of efficacious remedies that fit within an existing legal framework. Dr. Adya earned her law degree and doctorate in social psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which is among the foremost interdisciplinary programs in psychology and law. Using the literature of disability discrimination in employment, her research laid the foundation for a new direction in employment and disability discrimination research; findings suggest potential for discrimination based on perceived disability due to a positive family history or a positive genetic test for a disorder. Dr. Adya’s recent work at the intersection of property and psychology involved a collaboration with others to examine U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence related to 4th Amendment search and seizure caselaw and conceptions of privacy.  While jurisprudence seems to consider privacy a unidimensional construct, our empirical research using multidimensional scaling techniques suggests privacy is more complex than that.

At BBI, Dr. Adya has continued to examine factors that impact the inclusion of people with disabilities in employment settings, particularly through the use of technology-based and other accommodations and a corporate culture of inclusion broadly.  In addition, she has examined factors, such as accessibility, that have impacted people with disabilities’ community and political participation. As Director of Research at BBI, Dr. Adya directs the research agenda and oversees BBI research activities across all offices. She works with researchers across projects to develop and implement data collection protocols, conduct data analyses, and prepare timely reports that disseminate project data and findings. Key projects include: (1) conducting a survey to examine voting patterns and political participation of people with disabilities in the 2012 elections (Principal Investigator), (2) a field-based experimental study investigating implicit attitudes evident in employer hiring decisions for the NIDRR-funded Demand-Side Employment Placement Models project (Principal Investigator); (3) a project examining workplace accommodations’ effectiveness and cost-benefit over the long-term, a sub-contract of the Workplace Accommodations RERC (Co-Principal Investigator) that involves a survey of over 2,000 employees and supervisors – over 1,200 of which were persons with disabilities; (4) the Department of Labor, ODEP-funded Disability Case Study Research Consortium on Employer Best Practices in Employing Persons with Disabilities, a project which established a paradigm for conducting business-focused case studies of the return-on-investment that accrues from the employment of persons with disability and which involved conducting several case studies (Project Director); (5) a project examining service delivery models of assistive technology, including accommodations in the workplace and their costs and benefits, to facilitate improved employment outcomes for persons with disabilities; (6) a project examining workplace policies, practices, and accommodations that support the reintegration and retention of Veterans, National Guard and Reserve members; (7) conducting employer roundtables to discuss inclusion and accommodation in the workplace for persons with disabilities through the New York Medicaid Infrastructure Grant; (8) a project examining the accessibility of America’s Job Centers (formerly One-Stops) nationwide, (9) a project examining laws, policies, and practices that support the creation and use of accessible technologies in the workplace, (10) the Disability Program Navigator – Hurricane Initiative, a project examining the role of One-Stops and their personnel in assisting citizens with disabilities to identify accessible community and workplace solutions after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; and (11) the Community Access and Participation project examining the physical and programmatic accessibility and accommodations offered at civic sites across eight south-eastern states and their impact on community participation.

Publications

2017

• Peter Blanck, Meera Adya. (2017). Future Directions in Employment, Occupational Rehabilitation, and Disability: Introduction to the Special Section. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, DOI 10.1007/s10926-017-9741-y.

2015

• Katherine E. McDonald, Pamela Williamson, Sally Weiss, Meera Adya, Peter Blanck and DBTAC: Southeast ADA Center PAR Research Consortium. (2015). The March Goes On: Community Access for People with Disabilities. Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 348-363.

2009

• D. Samant, M. Soffer, B. Hernandez, M. Adya, O. Akinpelu, P. Blanck, et al. (July 2009). Corporate Culture and Employment of People With Disabilities: Role of Social Workers and Service Provider Organizations. Journal of Social Work in Disability & Rehabilitation, 8(3-4):171-188.

2008

• Meera Adya, Peter Blanck. (2008). Judges’ Nonverbal Behavior. Brian L. Cutler, ed., Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law, SAGE Publications, 388-390.

2007

• M.V. Reina, M. Adya, P. Blanck. (2007). Defying Double Discrimination. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 8, 95-104.